Wild Blue Yonder
by NineFeathers
Summary: Ezio realizes that Renaissance aviation is more dangerous than he anticipated. Originally a kink meme fill.


_Note: This was originally a fill on the kink meme. Prompt was something about Ezio crashing the Flying Machine._

Leonardo watched in horror as his flying machine, and by extension, its pilot, completed a perfect nosedive into the roof of the building a few hundred yards away. The machine splintered upon impact and slid off the roof, carrying Ezio with it. Leonardo was running before he realized it, silently praying that Ezio was not as broken as his poor flying machine.

…

Ezio frantically maneuvered the control bar of the glider, hoping to land on the tiled roof below him. The night wind caught the glider and yanked it upward, and Ezio, still unfamiliar with the machine, overcompensated. The red tiles rushed up toward him, and the glider hit nose-first. The machine gave a terrible groan and flipped on its side, dragging Ezio with it. Panicking, Ezio unsheathed his dagger and cut himself free of the harness. Blood slicked his palm as he gashed his own hand in his hurry.

He slammed down onto the roof, landing hard on his right shoulder. He felt a crunch and immediate pain, so intense it made his ears ring and his vision fade. Even worse, he was falling with the wreckage of the flying machine. He made a grab for the roof's edge but his right arm would not cooperate.

Now he experienced the terror of free-fall as the ground rushed up to meet him. Strangely, his mind produced only a single, coherent thought before impact:

_Leonardo is going to kill me._

Blackness.

…

Leonardo and Antonio found Ezio amidst the wreckage of the flying machine. The Assassin was bloody and unconscious, one arm twisted awkwardly beneath him. Blood pooled beneath his head, trickling from a cut on his brow. Flinging debris aside, Leonardo crouched by Ezio's prone form and examined him. He was terrified that Ezio had fractured his skull, or worse, his spine. He gently touched his friend's face.

"Ezio. Ezio my friend, you must wake." Ezio's eyelids fluttered, revealing golden- brown eyes unfocused with pain. He groaned and squinted hard at Leonardo, struggling to sit up.

"Leonardo…I…I'm so sorry…ah!" Ezio sagged back, clutching his shoulder. Spots clouded his vision, which doubled and tripled rather alarmingly. He tried to focus on what he hoped was the true Leonardo. Leonardo's eyes were wide and very blue in his pale face.

"Ezio, you must be still. What have you injured? Move for me." Leonardo was clearly alarmed. Ezio stared at Leonardo, confused by the onslaught of conflicting commands. His head throbbed viciously enough to turn his stomach. He swallowed hard. He slowly drew his knees up to rest his forehead on them, and this seemed to reassure the artist that he had not snapped his spine in the crash.

Antonio looked at Leonardo.

"He needs a doctor." Leonardo shook his head. The sound of gagging and retching made both men turn their heads. Leonardo frowned as he watched Ezio revisit his lunch. He crouched by Ezio as the assassin wiped his mouth and spat.

"I can treat him. Help me get him up."

Ezio felt hands under his elbows, pulling him upward. He groaned as someone touched his right arm, and immediately Leonardo let go, frowning.

"I'm sorry, Ezio. Here, lean on me." Ezio leaned awkwardly on Leonardo as the artist slipped an arm around his waist. Ezio cradled his right arm to his chest and allowed Leonardo to guide him back to the workshop, a task made difficult by the ground constantly sliding away under his boots. Once inside the workshop, Leonardo eased Ezio down onto the low sofa and turned away to wash his hands.

"Now," said Leonardo, his blue eyes dark with worry, "tell me what hurts."

"Right shoulder," mumbled Ezio, fumbling with the closures of his doublet left-handed. His right arm refused to work properly. His hand was pushed aside and Leonardo swiftly opened his doublet and undershirt. Cool air made him shiver as Leonardo undressed him, carefully easing his shirt over his injured shoulder. Ezio mustered a tiny smile.

"I am afraid I must disappoint you tonight, Leonardo. I have a headache." Leonardo's head snapped up at Ezio's joke, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the assassin's eyes were closed and Ezio could not see the hot color flooding his cheeks.

"A rather bad one too, from the looks of things," agreed Leonardo, fumbling to cover his embarrassment. He pulled off Ezio's doublet and chemise and frowned at the state of the shoulder. It was bruised an ugly purple-black and grossly out of joint. In fact, Ezio's entire right side was badly bruised, and Leonardo wondered if he had broken a few ribs as well. Ezio was clearly in a great deal of pain; he was practically squirming in his seat, and the knuckles of his left hand were white where he gripped his right elbow. Leonardo frowned, very gently running his fingers over Ezio's shoulder as he envisioned the bones and muscles beneath the skin.

"Your shoulder is dislocated, Ezio. I need to reset it, and it will hurt. I am sorry, my friend."

"Be done with it and do not apologize," growled Ezio, voice and breathing rough with pain. Without waiting for Ezio to tense, Leonardo grabbed his arm at wrist and elbow and quickly manipulated the joint back into place. Ezio groaned and cursed viciously, turning even paler. Leonardo ignored him as he carefully prodded the shoulder to be sure it was correctly reset.

"Better?" asked Leonardo, peering into Ezio's face. Ezio nodded and squeezed shut his watering eyes, breathing deeply and cringing at the stabs of pain from his cracked ribs. The pain in his shoulder was rapidly receding.

"Thank you Leonardo," he murmured. "It is much better." Leonardo smiled brightly.

"Excellent! Now your head." Leonardo frowned at the cut on Ezio's forehead, which was already bruised and swollen. The wound had bled profusely, and dried blood glued Ezio's hair to his forehead and covered half his face. Leonardo dipped a clean rag in a bowl of warm water and gently cleaned the cut before spreading a pungent-smelling salve over it. Frowning, he carefully washed the blood from Ezio's pale face. Ezio flinched at the touch, but did not pull away.

"How is your vision?" Leonardo held up a candle, watching closely as Ezio's pupils contracted. Ezio cringed at the brightness.

"Blurry. Getting better." Leonardo nodded.

"Very good. Let me know if you are feeling sick." Ezio swallowed. His stomach twisted threateningly, but he did not want his friend to worry. He hoped the nausea would improve if he kept still. He stretched out gingerly on Leonardo's couch, suddenly aware of every bruise and pulled muscle. Moving was going to be painful later. His bruised ribs and aching shoulder made finding a comfortable position difficult, and Leonardo's lumpy couch seemed to press on all of his sore places. His head throbbed. He closed his eyes, lulled by Leonardo's excited prattling.

"I can't believe it actually flew! I never expected such a thing to work. This is most fascinating. I will have to build a new machine, of course, but now that I have seen it fly, I can construct a better one. Don't you think, Ezio?"

Ezio thought that calling what he had done _flying_ was being generous.

"Mmmhm."

"Ezio. You really shouldn't sleep with a head injury." Leonardo walked over and looked down at him, arms folded. Ezio had his face buried in the lone sofa cushion as though it might cure his concussion.

"Mmm."

Leonardo sighed. Keeping the assassin awake would be impossible. Ezio finally spoke, his voice a low mumble.

"Just come and make sure I'm still breathing every so often. I know you'll be up working anyway." Leonardo considered this. Ezio did have a point.

"Very well. Get some rest, Ezio."

"Mmmhm."

…

Ezio's dreams consisted of an endless loop of flight and crash landing, conjured over and over again, always with the same heart-stopping moment of terror when he realized he was going to crash. He woke in a sweat; the pain from his shoulder and head had become nearly unbearable. His chest ached and he could not find a position that eased the pain. He felt miserable; all the bruises from his fall had stiffened painfully. A faint glow emanated from Leonardo's workroom, and Ezio heard sawing.

Cradling his right elbow in his left hand, Ezio carefully stood and nearly fell over when he failed to coordinate his blurry vision and bruised knees. Ezio shuffled to the workroom, where he found Leonardo surrounded by various lengths of wood that already resembled the delicate struts of the flying machine. His stomach did a flip. He knew he would have to fly again, and the thought unsettled him. He swallowed dryly.

"Ezio! What are you doing up?" Ezio jumped, then cringed as the movement jarred his head.

"I heard you working…" Ezio trailed off, the rest of the sentence lost in the haze of his headache. Explaining to Leonardo that he couldn't sleep because everything hurt and he kept dreaming about crashing seemed childish. Leonardo frowned, looking concerned.

"You look like death, my friend. Go and rest. There will be plenty of time to look later. I will fix you something for the pain." Leonardo dropped his tools and rifled through his medicine chest. He mixed something in a cup and handed it to Ezio. Ezio drank, blanching at the taste. He barely noticed Leonardo's firm hand on his good elbow, guiding him to the back of the workshop, to the room where he guessed Leonardo slept. The artist lit a lamp and Ezio looked around the cluttered bedroom until he saw the large, comfortable-looking bed. Leonardo looked sheepish, and Ezio thought he seemed almost embarrassed.

"I am so sorry, Ezio. I should have put you in here before. That sofa is barely fit to sit on. Now, lie down and rest. You should not be up."

Hesitantly, Ezio shuffled to Leonardo's high bed and lay down slowly. The feather-stuffed mattress seemed to mold around him as his bruised body sank into it. The relief was so intense it was almost painful. He barely noticed when Leonardo tugged his boots off and draped a soft blanket over him. He closed his eyes, his head spinning with drugs and exhaustion, and returned to dreams of flight.

…

A month later, Ezio stood once again on the roof of Leonardo's workshop with the new flying machine. His injuries were mostly healed, but the trauma of the first flight still lingered. Ezio did not want to admit his fear, rational as it was. Leonardo was chattering on excitedly about the improvements he'd made to the glider. Ezio could not concentrate, despite his interest in Leonardo's work. Instead he stared at the massive bonfires that glowed in the distance. He imagined that he would end up like a tiny moth that flew too close: consumed by flame and burnt to a husk.

He told himself firmly that his nervousness was ridiculous, that he had learned much from his last flight, that he would succeed in his mission. For all that his brain rationalized, his stomach remained a clenched bundle of nerves.

"Are you going to kill someone, Ezio?" Leonardo's voice broke his train of thought. Confused, Ezio looked at his friend, who eyed the hidden blade on his left wrist pointedly. The slender blade was barely a shadow in the firelight. Ezio immediately retracted the blade, mentally scolding himself for fiddling with it. He wondered when he had developed _that _particular bad habit. Leonardo smiled at him.

"Are you ready?" Ezio swallowed hard and nodded.

"Very ready. She looks rock solid." In actuality, the glider appeared to have all the structural integrity of a house made of toothpicks. Leonardo frowned.

"You're awfully pale Ezio. Are you sure you are ready?" Leonardo looked truly concerned, and Ezio shook his head.

"It's nothing. I am just…the last time did not go very well." Ezio took a deep breath and eased himself into the glider, testing the control bar. The knot in his stomach pulled a little tighter and panic squeezed his chest. To his horror, he found that his hands were shaking. He jumped when Leonardo's hand closed warmly on his shoulder.

"Relax, Ezio. Trust the glider to do its job. It will not be like last time. And think! You will be making history!" Leonardo smiled at him, and Ezio found himself smiling back, feeling almost confident, remembering the exhilaration of his first brief flight.

"Good luck, Ezio. Now go!"

His nerves forgotten, Ezio sprinted down the narrow runway, kicking off hard. The roof disappeared beneath him, and he flew.


End file.
